KINGS LANGLEY, England -- Imagination Technologies Group here today announced it has extended a two-year partnership with STMicroelectronics to development new ICs for high-performance PC graphics and video accelerators, based on Imagination's PowerVR technology for three-dimensional images.
Last summer, STMicroelectronics announced a breakthrough in 3-D graphics and video acceleration with the launch of its Kyro series of accelerators, based on PowerVR technology (see July 6, 2000, story). The accelerators combine Imagination's tile-based rendering technique with STMicroelectronics' digital video technology and chip processing capabilities.
According to Imagination, the PowerVR technology eliminates redundant processing and avoids memory bottlenecks by doing only what is absolutely necessary in 3-D systems. The approach also keeps as much 3-D processing as possible on a single chip to avoid interconnect delays between devices, said the 16-year-old company. The PowerVR combines tile-based rendering with 32-bit true color, eight-layer multi-texturing, and hidden-surface removal techniques to allow maximum performance from the available memory bandwidth, said Imagination.
